Improving itemization

Itemization in Diablo 3 is one of the most improvable aspects of the game so i think most feedback should be directed towards this area. This feedback is NOT supposed to be a demand towards our dear CMs but rather a thought-process of the community agreeing/disagreeing with one another to reveal strengths and weaknesses of the suggested ideas to reduce the ...

Disparity of perspectives

Going by the premise of humans being rational (not logical) it´s possible to say that people standing at the exact same viewpoint of a certain topic are going to make the exact same conclusions. Consensus isn´t met every time when ideas from individuals coming from different perspectives collide and no one is capable or willing to change the personal perspective. This is where the world wide web shines. It allows to bring probably any viewpoint possible to the table and allows to look at the topics from a greater distance from many angles. So provide every thought you guys have, everything that doesn´t suit you everything you disagree with so we can create the improved...

Carrot on a stick

The carrot on a stick is the most simplified model of motivation through anticipation of a reward. Biggest problem of this analogy is the lack of showing possibilities how to increase the hunger of the "carrot-chaser". Many Diablo players i have talked to feel the carrot they are chasing right now is either to hard to catch or does not satisfy enough when caught. The most simple way to address this issue is to simply add more carrots to the equation. But let´s not leave it at carrots, we want apples, hot dogs and German "Wurst" tingling in front of our eyes. Adding more and more motivators has the benefit that we can allow the chaser to more often catch something he was chasing for, but even more importantly to give him "Wurst" while he was chasing the apple. Convincing us to get things we didn´t even know we are hungry for is such a diabolic process that simply confuses us and as soon as we start chasing every stick and being rewarded with even the smallest forms of rewards most players will stick to chasing it. So let´s add more carrots via ...

Parallel progression ! Important !

THIS is the most lackluster principle about Diablo 3 at the moment. Currently there are to few carrots to chase. Parallel progression means we improve on multiple aspects simultaneously. The current game SHOULD allow to always make small steps of improvement no matter in what direction we are going. But there aren´t enough tabs to progress in. Currently there are:

- Paragon levels: Every time you kill anything you gain XP
- Gem upgrades: On every kill you have the possibility to find a gem and move closer to the "gem-limit". Per gem slot you will need 729 gems of the same type. It´s like a second XP bar that increases by 1 every time a needed gem drops.
- Items (Screen-DPS): The most important tab of progression, but also the one that has the biggest problem. Items that are found at the moment don´t have "character". People are not searching for new boots, for a new weapon or for a new ring. They look for an overall + in the DPS screen. Sometimes it feels like there is only one item-slot called the "DPS-Screen"-charslot. This was done better in Diablo 2 where people explicitly looked for white items to fill the weapon slot and then put a check on that slot and tried to improve the other ones.
- Knowledge: When unexperienced people gain new informations on every run. Identifying which events to skip, what the map layout looks like and how to fight certain monsters, etc.

These tabs are already allow for a good feeling of parallel progression, but people want more, so let´s start by adding better crafting and adding imbues!

Stop Skipping

Crafting in other games:

Diablo 2: The most famous one. I´m going to stick to the "Item-crafting". This was the most complex item-system of the game but also had the chance to create the best items for many slots. To craft properly one had to find many types of items and acquire a lot of knowledge. There are ilvls, clvls, alvls, affixes, recipes and itemtypes that needed to be studied and while farming the mats you always had a chance to also find things you were not looking for which made it feel even more rewarding.
- Complexity
+ Could be very rewarding
+ Progression in many tabs

Titan Quest:
Probably one of the best crafting systems was titan quests charm/relic hunting. These imbues were bound to monster types and only these could drop the items. There were 3-5 parts each imbue consisted of and there were 20+ types of imbues. Each imbue could only be cast on certain armor types and only if the item is not of unique quality. Here is where the magic happens: The small parts held a small bonus that always increased by the same amount for every new part added but once the charm was completed new affixes from a new affix pool were added!
Example: Incarnation of Hektor´s shadow: 60 defense & 3 % chance to dodge projectiles per part. On completion the imbue additionally rolled one of the following stats: 65 defense, 450 life, 26 strength, 16% armorpen, 41% reistance.
This might seem redundant but in the game it created great incentives to use rare items instead of uniques and farming for the rare ones could keep people entertained for hours every time they found an upgrade. My absolute favourite system.
+ Great customization and incentive to farm
- The monsters that dropped charms didn´t drop anything else and didn´t allow for parallel progression

Torchlight:
A very unusual form of crafting but it had its hights. For a small fee you had a chance to either add an affix, not change anything about the item, or remove all existing affixes.
+ Very simple, very fast
+ Items are never completed
- Risk of item going from hero to zero was to big.
- tooo random.

Ideas for Diablo 3

Imbues

As mentioned above imbues, to me, are the greatest type of progression in ARPGs. The idea is to create a new item-type that has varying loot-tables for each region. These items can imbue certain item-slots and those can not be of unique quality. They consist of several parts (3-7) and each part roles random stats of the same affix and can be imbued on an item even if the imbue is not completed. If combined the affixes add up and if completed they also gain a new affix from a new affix pool. If this new affix is an ability a more detailed description is available in the "imbue-window" Imbues start dropping in Hell difficulty. Imbued items can not be traded.

Example: In the cathedral, the crypts and the festering woods each monster has a chance to drop an "imbue of withering". This item is an additional item drop and does not effect other item drops. It is not influenced by magic find and they can not be traded. The "imbue of withering" consists of 6 parts. It can only imbue amulets. The base attribute of each part is "+2-8 intelligence, 1-3 strength". A completed imbue can vary from +12 intelligence and +6 strength to +48 intelligence and +18 strength. When the imbue is completed it gains an additional random affix giving the imbue a random passive from any class (only the respective classes can use it).

If implemented correctly these imbues can create huge incentives to keep farming and improving. What does correct implementation look like? Important rules are:

- Easy to achieve, very very hard to perfect: The first step to make this possible is randomization. Everybody will be able to complete imbues but most of them will be of average quality if rushed. Those that want perfect ones will have to farm for a longer time. The second step is to make people lose the imbue, once it has been used. If you managed to craft a perfect one, it is necessary to still have incentive to craft those. So the imbue has to be lost if the amulet is switched.

- Make them farmable, but not as an exclusive type of progression: As mentioned in the example these things have to drop WHILE killing whatever you want to. If you limit them to an area where ONLY imbues drop, people get tunnel visioned and are saddened every time they don´t get the drop they wanted. But making them drop at completely random locations makes it to hard and to unrewarding to strive and hunt for those. So the perfect solution is to bind certain imbues to certain places that allow for efficient farming but not at the cost of normal loot.

- The inventory problem: The biggest problem is the space these little imbues take up. I think usually people will want to farm at least for two sorts PER imbue. One perfect slot that wants the best stats and one "trash" slot that people just want to complete so they can get the completion affix. But i wouldn´t call it a problem, if there wasn´t a possible solution to this. By creating a new "imbue-screen" that has all imbues listed you can not only create an easy way of informing people which imbues exist but also give them the possibility to craft one imbue in the window. If people want to work on more than one imbue they will have to give up a slot in their inventory. I´m thinking about creating 20 imbues, so the window would consist of two rows with ten imbues per row. All available imbues will be listed there and be greyed out until the player stores a partial or a completed imbue in the slot. The player can drag this imbue out and use it on an item at any given time. If moving the mouse over an imbue in the "imbues-screen" a tooltip saying "This magical tool can increase it´s wearers intellect and strength if used properly. It was seen to be created as a side product when corpses in the foul crypts and graveyards were reawakened." to show people what the imbue does and give a rough description where it can drop.

Example of a few imbues:

1. Example:
Imbue of withering:
- Parts drop in Cathedral, Festering Woods, Crypts, The Weeping Hollow
- Tooltip: "This magical tool can increase its wearers intellect and strength if imbued on an amulet. It was seen to be created as a side product when corpses in the foul crypts and graveyards were reawakened."
- Can imbue amulets
- 6 Parts
- 2-8 Intelligence, 1-3 Strength (Min: 12 Int, 6 Str; Max: 48 Int, 18 Str)
- Completion bonus: Gain a random passive for your character (respective class only)

2. Example:
Imbue of celerity:
- Parts drop in Fields of Misery, Howling Plateau, Desolate Sands
- Tooltip: "This magical tool can increase its wearers speed, allowing him to move quicker and dodge attacks if imbued on an amulet. Creatures in huge open areas had to adapt to their environment and move quickly to survive. Magicians claim to be able to harness their essence and bind it to scrolls."
- Can imbue amulets
- 3 Parts
- 1%-2% dodge chance, 0.5%-4% movement speed (Min: 3% dodge, 1.5% ms; Max: 6% dodge, 12% ms)
- Completion bonus: Teleport 20-60 yards by clicking "force move" on the ground while having the item not on cooldown, 60-10 seconds cooldown

3. Example:
Imbue of resilience:
- Parts drop in Hell Rift, Gardens of Hope, The Battlefields, The Barracks
- Tooltip: "Grants the wearer improved defense and allows to retaliate attacks."
- Can imbue shields
- 3 Parts
- 0.5%-2% all resistance, 5-50 armor (Min: 1.5% AR, 15 armor; Max: 6% AR, 150 armor)
- Completion bonus: + 50 random single resistance, Shield retaliation: After being struck the yielder has a 30%-80% chance to retaliate with 300%-2000% of intelligence as damage. The retaliation is not possible for 2 seconds after each block. (Coupled with this affix i would like to see at least one tier of shields that can role a lower block chance than 10%)

Crafting has a few major purposes once the max level has been reached. The first one is to improve the loot experience. On every kill monsters have a chance to not only give better gear to the player but to also give new materials to the player. In D3 this is ensured through salvaging items that have no use to the charakter. The next goal of a good crafting system should be to allow to customize the players gear by giving him a way to influence the loot he gets. The only decision the player has at the moment is whether he wants to use his materials for boots or for a belt. Combined with the huge effort and the lack of unique affixes for crafting it is very discouraging for players to invest time in crafting rather than killing a few other monsters which grants the same reward. Crafting should add new affixes and allow for alternative loot paths. Players should be allowed to dedicate their hunt to materials and see the regular items as an added bonus if they so desire. A little bit of complexity should also add more fun and dedication from players.

Changes to crafting materials:

Following the idea of parallel progression crafting materials have to pile up while the player is doing whatever he wants. The other goal is to make the piñatas that dare calling themselves our enemies more interesting to pop. We can achieve this by changing the current crafting material system a bit:

- Material quality: Depending on the affix quality of the salvaged item we can get 3 types of material quality: normal, superior and magical. Items in the 0%-60% range of the best affixroll salvage into normal quality (90%) or superior quality (10%). Items with the best affix being in the 60%-94% range salvage into normal quality (20%), superior quality (70%) or magical quality (10%). Items with their best affix in the 94%-100% range salvage into superior quality (50%) or magical quality (50%). This allows you to gain superior and magical crafting materials even from white and blue items, making these items really interesting to dedicated crafters. Yellow items still have the advantage of rolling more affixes and therefore having a higher chance on high affix rolls.

Usage of normal, superior and magical quality: At first we have to remove these materials from the inventory completely. Right now there are 3 different lvl 60 crafting materials and adding quality levels will overflow the inventory. Since these materials don´t have any use at all, no matter how often you click on them they do not deserve to be in the players inventory. Create a new crafting window with a 3x3 grid. Not only does this look really compelling and tidy, but it also removes the hastle of storing and picking them back up. Dragging those into the trading window should still be possible though. Also, dragging higher quality materials into lower quality brackets inside the materials window allows to downgrade the materials fast. At the crafting window the player can chose which quality level materials he wants to use.
The different quality levels influence the efficiency of the player´s crafting by altering the amount of items crafted. Normal materials always generate one item. Superior materials have a 20% chance to create one item, a 70% chance to create two items at once and a 10% chance to create 3 items. Now things get crazy: Magical items have a 50% chance to create 3 items, a 30% chance to create 4 items, a 15% chance to create 5 items, a 4% chance to create 7 items and a 1% chance to create 10(!!!) items at once. These items are rolled individually and the player should make sure he has free inventory space if he doesn´t want to turn into a pinata himself.

- New crafting item, that CRAFTS!: More loot is something everybody wants. Another colour that we can cheer about and look forward to on every kill called SCROLL OF THE HORADRIM.
A very rare crafting material that can drop everywhere and stacks in the players inventory. Dropchances are higher for unique monsters. This item allows players to increase the third affix of an item by a random amount between 1%-30%. The bonus is shown as a new affix at the bottom of the items description and adds "of the horadrim" to the basic items name. You can use the scroll of Horadrim as often as you want to reroll the increas of the third affix.

Crafting - Blacksmith:

New recipes can drop from monsters. These are similar to sets but every piece works well on its own and they allow players to add flavour to their itemslots by introducing new affixes. These items have the same crafting materials cost as the regular rare items + one white item. The affixes of the white item will be kept when crafted. After an item has been crafted it can be enchanted with a scroll of the horadrim to add one additional effect.

Crimson-recipes:
These allow players completely forgo the current defensive stats armor and resistance affixes by granting the player a huge lifeboost and situational defense. Items crafted with these recipes have NO armor and NO resistance at all. They can not be imbued and can not be traded. Crimson items can be created for the boots, belt, shoulders and wrists-slot. They have 3 base affixes:
+ 200-500 Vitality
+ 10%-20% Life
+ Armorconversion 1-25 (Armorconversion: For every 1000 points of damage the character takes he gains x amount of armor for 5 seconds.)
Along with these set affixes there are another 4 affixes (excluding armor/resist):
1. Either +5.000-25.000 Healthglobes/Potions OR +500-2.500 Hp/s.
2. random affix from the current affixtable (affixlevel = itemlevel)
3. random affix from the current affixtable (if 1 higher alvl is available than alvl = ilvl + 1; if no higher alvl is available than alvl=ilvl - 1)
4. random affix from the current affixtable (if 2 higher alvl are available than alvl = ilvl + 2; if no higher alvl is available than alvl=ilvl - 2)
Additionally to the affix-roles the player can enchant crafted items to gain one ability that is autocast every 30 seconds (wizard-armor,monk-mantra,barb-shouts). Only the latest ability that has been put on works (if the player has more than one enchanted item).

Obsidian-recipes:
These allow players completely forgo the current critchance and critdmg affixes by granting the player an attackspeed bonus and increasing monsters vulnerability. Items crafted with these recipes have NO critical chance and NO critical damage at all. They can not be imbued and can not be traded. Obsidian items can be created for the boots, hands, amulet and head-slot. They have 3 base affixes:
+ 100-250 Attribute
+ 1%-5% increased attack speed
+ a) Vulnerability 1000-7500 (80% chance) or Vulnerability 1000-15000 (20% chance) (Vulnerability: Increases the damage taken by target by x after each completed attack. This damage is added after critmodificators and is therefore not improved by critical hits.)
Along with these set affixes there are another 4 affixes (excluding crit,critdmg):
1. + 2-7 pickup radius
2. random affix from the current affixtable
3. random affix from the current affixtable
4. random affix from the current affixtable
Additionally to the affix-roles the player can enchant crafted items to gain one ability that has a 1%-10% chance to be cast on hit (chackram,exploding palm,zombie charger,energy twister). Only the latest ability that has been put on works (if the player has more than one enchanted item).

Ember-recipes:
These allow players to heavily take advantage of abilities dealing damage over time. Items crafted with these recipes have NO critical chance and NO critical damage at all. They can not be imbued and can not be traded. Ember items can be created for the weapon, hands, head and amulet-slot. They have 3 base affixes:
+ 4%-12% increased damage to elite monsters
+ 1%-6% movementspeed
+ a) Curse mastery 10%-35% (80% chance) or Curse mastery 25%-55% (20% chance)
(Curse mastery: Increases strength of damage over time effects that are applied to the enemy)
Along with these set affixes there are another 4 affixes (excluding crit,critdmg):
1. Either +50-200 armor or +20-50 single resist
2. random affix from the current affixtable
3. random affix from the current affixtable
4. random affix from the current affixtable
Additionally to the affix roles the player can enchant crafted items to gain one permanent minion (mystic ally,raven,3 zombie dogs,Madawc) that is resummoned after 30 if it dies. Only the latest ability that has been put on works (if the player has more than one enchanted item).

Anthracite-recipes:
These recipes bring a new use to all the crowd control affixes that spawn on items by adding a dmg-aspect to successful procs. Anthracite items can not roll main attributes. Along with this set there will be a new lvl 59 2hand legendary which quadruples the damage done by the procs. They can not be imbued and can not be traded. Anthracite Items can be made for the chest, head, belt and ring slots. They have 3 base affixes:
- Reduction to crowdcontrols +3%-12%
- Reduced damage from elites by 2%-5%
- a) Empathy 300%-1500% (90% chance) or Empathy 1300%-2000% (10% chance)
(Empathy: For every proc of crowd control effects the target also receives x dmg based on Vitality)
Along with these set affixes there are another 4 affixes (excluding main attributes):
1. random crowdcontrol effect
2. random affix from the current affixtable
3. random affix from the current affixtable
4. random affix from the current affixtable
Additionally to the affix roles the player can enchant crafted items to gain one permanent minion (mystic ally,raven,3 zombie dogs,Madawc) that is resummoned after 30 if it dies. Only the latest ability that has been put on works (if the player has more than one enchanted item).

Cyan-recipes:
These allow players completely forgo the current defensive stats armor and resistance affixes by granting the player dodge and a bloodshield. Items crafted with these recipes have NO armor and NO resistance at all. They can not be imbued and can not be traded. Cyan items can be created for the belts, bracers and boots-slot. They have 3 base affixes:
+ 3000-15000 Healthglobes/Potions
+ 3%-13% Dodge
+ Bloodshield 10%-33% (Bloodshield: The character is surrounded by a shield with x% of your healthglobes/potion bonus as HP. The shield regenerates 5% of its value per second.)
Along with these set affixes there are another 4 affixes (excluding armor/resist):
1. Either 1%-5% IAS OR Bonus minimum damage 5-33.
2. random affix from the current affixtable
3. random affix from the current affixtable
4. random affix from the current affixtable
Additionally to the affix-roles the player can enchant crafted items to gain one ability that is autocast every 30 seconds (wizard-armor,monk-mantra,barb-shouts). Only the latest ability that has been put on works (if the player has more than one enchanted item).

Runecrafting using Shen:

The next character that needs more use is Shen the Jewelcrafter! His job is to give players small improvements over long periods of time. Currently he is only capable of upgrading gems as a form of progression. Every gem that drops currently increases the players progress by a small amount. The higher the upgrade gets the lower the total increase of strength is. For every perfect gem the player currently needs 729 gemdropps of the same type in inferno-difficulty. Problems arise when players start using the auction house. The costs of buying a gem in the auction house are about the same as the costs to craft the gem yourself and therefore removes the incentives to collect gems at all. This removes Shen's purpose almost completely and therefore he needs a new thing to do!
Runecrafting allows players to improve their favourite abilities and if really dedicated, players can even "perfect" those. Long long ago every rune had multiple levels but this was removed because the system of storing hundreds of runes was to clunky. So to address this the system has to change a little:
Runepower: For every kill the player gains 1 runepower (10 for elite, 100 for bosses) to one random rune-type (crimson,obsidian,golden,indigo,alabaster) that is not capped. The runepower is shown in a small section at the bottom of the skill selection frame. Every rune-type can store up to a max of 100.000 runepower. If the player collects enough power he can use it to upgrade one of the abilities permanently to the next level by going to Shen and selecting the ability and the rune he wants to improve in a new tab called "Runecrafting". There are 3 upgrades for every rune possible. The first one costs 10.000, the second one costs 35.000 and the last and final upgrade costs 100.000. Upgrading reduces the runepower by the amount it costs. Players start earning runepower after completing normal mode by killing monster that grants experience. Runepower is shared among all characters of the same gamemode (softcore - hardcore).

New items for runepower: These items allow players to influence the runepower farming process and give new items to be excited about if they drop:
- Powerfocus: There are 5 types of powerfoci, one for every type of rune. They have a rare dropchance (one every 1500 kills) and are bound to the account. Once used they make the next 5.000 runepower gathered go to the rune-type they were called. (Crimson powerfocus, obsidian powerfocus,...)
- Equilibrium: Very very rare. Once used they make the next 5.000 runepower gathered go towards every rune-type at once increasing the amount gathered by 5 times. Tradable. They can be combined with a powerfocus by Shen and create enchanced powerfoci, which give 3 times more runepower, but only to one type of rune.
- Concentrated runepower: very quite rare. Can be given to Shen to increase a random runetype by 5.000 runepower. Account bound. Can be combined with equilibrium to give 2.000 runepower to every rune-type.

What would change? Level 60 characters progress in even more tabs with every kill they make, they have a chance to receive even more loot and most importantly players will have to make choices again. It would take huge amounts of time to level every rune to max level (3.625.000 runepower per rune for a character with 25 abilities) and therefore characters are forced to make choices again. The rune upgrades are not strong enough to greatly change a characters power, but still encourage those who focus on their favourite abilites. Since runepower is shared amongst all characters it's also profitable to level new ones.

Jewels:

Jewels were a nice small addition to the original Diablo 2 making loot even more interesting and giving more choices for socketing. The new jewels should go the same route having a few primary goals:

+ New items to search, find and loot
+ Adding alternatives and allowing players to make choices
+ New system for players to learn and research
+ Easy to go into and very rewarding if dedicated to it
+ Constantly small steps of progression

First of all there need to be some changes made to the socketing. Jewels have to be unique and allow new choices and alternatives to give people the items they want. Putting them on the same level as gem-sockets is therefore not an option. Instead each jewel will be put at the same level as one affix. So this is how it'll work:

Shen gets a new tab called "add jewelsockets". Selffound non-jewelsocketed white/blue/yellow items will be put in a slot and the player can chose to socket the item.:

Rare items: The player can chose how many jewelsockets he wants to add. The new sockets remove one affix per added socket from the item after the item has reached 6 affixes and start removing the affix in the lowest position of the item after that. Example:

Blue Items: Shen adds a random amount of sockets , up to 5, to the item. 9% chance for 1 socket, 14% for 2 sockets, 39% chance for 3 sockets, 34% chance for 4 sockets and 4% chance for 5 sockets. Blue items keep their normal affixes. A blue item with good rolles and 5 sockets is therefore stronger than a rare but very unusual.

White Items: Shen adds a random amount of sockets , up to 5, to the item. 9% chance for 1 socket, 14% for 2 sockets, 39% chance for 3 sockets, 34% chance for 4 sockets and 4% chance for 5 sockets. Jewels used for these sockets are increased by x% based on how strong the white item was. Example: White superior boots with 14% increased defense increase the stats of the jewels by 14%.

Variations of Jewels:
Having just one type of jewels wouldn't increase the current loottable by a lot so there have to be different types of jewels:

(Fire affinity acts like +x% firedamage but every jewel scales with itsself multiplicatively. Therefore it has to be lower. If used on a couple of jewels it is weaker, but when used on many or all jewels it has to be vastly superior)

Affixjewels: These jewels have up to 4 random affixes from the normal jewels-affixtable.

Jewelaffixes:

Since items with jewelsockets can not be imbued or enchanted they have to be stronger than usual affixes when combined but every jewelaffix on its own has to be weaker. 33%-50% of the normal affixes' strength should be able to be achieved by jewelaffixes. The offensive affixes crit/critdmg/ias should not be in the jewelsaffixpool.

However, because jewels give players a very direct and easy way to "craft" customized items jewelaffixes with high properties have to be very rare (10%chance).

Since players will be encouraged to collect whole sets of jewels (10+) the chances of finding an upgrade are much higher than for example finding an upgrade for the amulet slot. This is much more rewarding and fun to the player, since even if he finds a very good jewel there will be still plenty of uses and potential for upgrades on the other jewels.

List of affixes:

All jewels:

Regular affixes: After a regular affix is picked it's quality version will be rolled: (50% chance regular, 40% superior, 10% mighty)
These are the mighty versions of each affix:

Jewels have to be quite rare (10% per rare pack) but each type of jewels has to have an area with an increased dropchance. A jewel can reroll the affixes staying the same type (Classspecific/elemental...) using another jewel and 3000 gold or a brimstone and 10000 gold. Using a scroll of nephilim will reroll the value of the affixes but not change the affixes.

That´s it! I hope you guys enjoyed my ideas and see what´s still possible in Diablo 3 itemization and crafting systems.

TL;DR: New itemtabs to progress in. While farming you won´t be looking for legendaries only.
Progression through items:

Epilogue: Now that you managed to scroll down that far, what is left to do?

- Feedback: What do you understand? What does not make sense to you? Why do you like/dislike the feature? Give me your perspective and show me the flaws of the system.

- Improve: Discuss how to make this system better and add ideas.

Charms - Talisman:

Okay, now that you have made it so far you might be thinking what purpose can adding a talisman serve. Add more build diversity? Simply act as an additional item slot? A new unique way to allow for crazy affixes? Well, the answer to all three is NO. Talismans should NOT be build defining, they should NOT have superrare and unique affixes and they are NOT supposed to degenerate into a second necklace-slot. So what purpose do they have?

Charms and the talisman have to be an entirely independent meta-game where players can make lots of small and cool upgrades that on their own might seem trivial but when combined create a unique sort of progression. So, how is that accomplished?

To see where this idea is going I'll have to refer to a popular D2 mod called Median XL. Medians charm system sucked, but that's not what we are looking at. What we ARE looking at is the ridiculous amount of affixes items could have. Items could have 20 affixes and more. Looking through one of these items could take half a minute until you fully understood what this item actually does. And this was AWESOME! Items felt very unique, even affixes that didn't serve any purpose felt sweet simply because they created this huge wall of text. To accomplish the same thing in D3 we need the talisman.

At the opposite side of the necklace we add this cute little new item. When clicking on this item a new 4x4 frame opens. Charms (1x1 or 2x1) can be put into this 4x4 frame and so the max amount of charms the talisman can hold is 16. So when you hover over your mouse the talisman is going to show a huge wall of text with dozens of varying numbers. THAT is cool! THAT is the main purpose of the talisman. To have this permanently changing item that nobody else has in a similar way. Every talisman has to be unique, every talisman has to be more special than a snowflake. At the end of each month you are supposed to have the desire to show your talisman to your friendlist and compare it with theirs. SO LET'S GET STARTED!

Charmwords:

If charms are simply a +5 strength, +10 life slot it doesn't feel like something new. So in addition to each charm granting this small bonus it has the potential to be in a charmword.
Charmwords are a combination of runewords and charms and are the main way to add spice to the simple statstacking character of usual charms. The main reason why the talisman was scratched was because it didn't add any unique mechanic, it didn't add flavour to the game and that's why it wasn't a great addition. With charmwords you can have an entire metagame around the talisman that doesn't have a clear choice and allow for much customization. The first thing we need are different charms:

- 8 types of charms: Ar - Bon - Cur - Del - Elf - Fis - Gor - Hel

Similar to runes, but not in the overwhelming way of having 20 unusable ones. Players are supposed to occasionally find new charmwords by toying around with their talisman. Each consecutive charm is 5 times rarer than the previous one. "Ar" charms are as rare as current legendaries with 200% magicfind. 5 charms of the same type can be combined to create a charm of the next higher tier.

If any combination of these charms is put into a row it can be a charmword.

Example: The charmword Ar-Ar-Ar-Ar adds 5 to all stats. So in your early stages when you haven't found the rarer charms you will rely on these ones. So your talisman might look something like this:

to make things more interesting: Additionally to the rows and columns the charmwords work diagonal (top left to bottom right and top right to bottom left) and all corners (top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right). This would add following bonuses to the example: Ar-Ar-Bon-Bon: - Ar Del Del Del: dexterity from talisman +50% and Ar Ar Del Bon: -

Don't forget that each charm on its own also has affixes just like the charms in D2!

Affixes
All charms can have up to 2 affixes. Big charms have higher rolls on the affixes because they are more limiting at charmwords. All charms share an affixpool but every charm also has a unique affix it can roll. Higher charms (Elf - Fis - Gor - Hel) have stronger affixes because of their rarity.

Unlocking charmwords:
If a player finds a charmword it is unlocked and listed in his journal so he can find it again. Additionally every boss can drop a scroll to unlock a new charmword the player hasn't discovered yet.

I see some nice ideas there. Nice work but i doubt Blizz would taky the effort to redesign any part of this game before expansion (actually i doubt they will ever do that).
I would like to see how your ideas work in game, especially crafting part but Blizz is picking up only simple suggestions from the community. If they would have to implement all those changes we would wait another few years.

I'd add one more thing that would make the itemization slightly better. Item quality.
In my opinion every item should have a chance to get better quality (let's say from 0 to 100% improved quality). The perfect quality items would drop very rarely but you could just improve the quality of the items using gold or some kind of runes. It would be also a nice gold sink because let's say you would have to pay 1 bilion gold to get good immortal king chest (the cost could depend on the itemscore) from 90% quality to 100% (100m per 1%). Of course the lower quality improvement would be cheaper than that.
Quality would give you better stats on the item (for example 0,5% cc per 10% quality on amulets) or even a unique item ability on 100% quality if the items is legendary./set.

I like your imbue idea. It would require some deep thoughts on the balancing, so we didn't just end up with everyone wanting 1 or 2 imbues and ignoring the others, but that kinda describes an issue with the whole game right now anyway
You have some nice examples, and another really nice benefit of a system like this, is how it can add focus on some of the item slots and item types that might be neglected otherwise. Such as shields, as you also use a lot in your examples.
Or as you mention in Titan Quest; how it could only be used on rare items to take frocus away from the unique items. A solution I dont like however, as it basically meant you had to ignore either the imbues or the legendary items. That's not very interesting either. Diablo 3s solution of having reasonable balance between rare items and legendary items is much preferable here.

I'm not so sure about the thematic crafting recipes; Crimson, Obsidian, Ember. I would probably just prefer the normal crafting system, with the player simply having more influence on what they end up getting. When you place the decision part on Blizzard, as in creating "thematic items" such as your 3 examples, the items could very easily end up being either irrelevant or overpowered/required, Letting the player decide for themselves, as long as they manage to get the needed materials, opens up for more customization (especially if/when the item stats themselves get better balanced in the future). That said, those crimson, obsidian items etc. could easily work the same way as set item recipes do now - as they surely sound interesting. I just don't think they can stand alone in the crafting system.
Some of those stat ideas could work well as actual stats that could end up on any item tbh. Sure, then you could have them on the same item as Crit chance - which would go against your goal I guess - but if we ended up having enough interesting stats to choose from, then you simply wont be be able to get all of them anymore, and would have to pick where you wanted to focus.

As for crafting, a lot of the "crafting and item enchanting" should focus on the broad customization of all types of items. Your imbue idea, as mentioned, could work insanely well toward improving less used types of items, but there is also a need for more item progression in general imo, and redesigned crafting system that allows the user to have more influence on the outcome. On top of that, the game could imo, greatly benefit from better item sinks.

As such, Ill post my own thoughts on the crafting and enchanting aspect:

I'd look at two games for some inspiration:

Star Wars Galaxies (SWG)
Hellgate London (HGL) (or TL2 in many similar ways)

SWG had, imo, some of the most interesting crafting system in any game.
It basically build upon one thing; quality variables on crafting materials. When finding a specific crafting material you didnt just find "Fiery Brimstone". You found a "Fiery Brimstone: Quality 3, Purity: 5, Sturdiness 10" (or whatever the stats should be called). These stats directly affected how high quality the items you crafted would have.

Not only did it create some interesting trading potential, where people stocked some of their highest quality crafting materials literally for years, because of its incredible value. But in a game like Diablo 3, it would add another benefit; differentiated dismantling of items.

As of now you get a Fiery brimstone whether you destroy the most crappy lvl 60 legendary, or destroying a legendary worth 1 billion gold. Resulting in people just destroying the crappy legendaries, rares etc.
Instead, if destroying a 1 billion gold legendary resulted in a "Friery Brismtone 10,10,10" then you would suddenly have an item sink in the game that worked for any and all item qualities.
Of course that would pretty much require some way for Blizzard to determine value from items, depending on which combinations of stats the item has rolled, and how much of these stats it got. So the system would value an item with 200 str, 200 vit, 70 AR and 8 CC higher than one with 200 str, 200 dex, high melee dmg reflect and high pickup radius for example. That should not be totally impossible however (while it would never be 100% fair, it should easily be close enough to be reasonable - hell, Blizzard has all the data they could ever want for making such a system, by looking at their very own AH.

These crafting materials wouldnt be enough on their own of course.
The other end of the system; the items you craft with the materials, would have to be redesigned as well.
When using very high quality crafting materials, you should of course have a very high chance of getting some godly item out of the process. Maybe even allow you to pick most of the stats on the item - depending on the quality of the materials - and the amount of said stat determined by the quality of the materials too of course.
There should still be some randomness to the process though, knowing exactly what you get isn't interesting in the long run imo.

Hell, we could get a 100+ new droppable crafting recipes here, which gave the user the ability to pre-pick a stat on a crafted item. Such as "Recipe of Great Strength", allowing the user to get a guaranteed 200-300 str roll on the item they were going to craft - and the recipe lost in the process (working as yet another material, just one that is gained as drop).

Moving unto Hellgate London, what they could learn here (and from TL2 as well for that matter) is other ways to improve items, as both of these games have quite a bit of enchanting and socketing options.

It should be possible to
1) Add 1 random stat to any item in the game - for some gold price. And for a very high price, allow us to remove the stat again, if it wasnt good enough. This process should be quite random - with the added stat only following the same rules as normal item creating. Would work as a gold sink and a "potentially never-ending" way to further improve items, after you found them.

2) Allow us to add one extra socket to any and all items (ignoring the normal socket limits) for a gold cost. Leading to:

3) More gem types!
3a) A special rare type of gem with no build in stats, which can "absorb" one stat from an item, destroying the item in the process. Allowing you to customize items a lot more, and having yet another item sink.
Some limits on which stats could be transfered this way - and maybe how many of such gems could be equipped at the same time - surely had to exist however - but should be broad enough to allow real customization

4) Another "high end option for people with too much gold" for customization that could be found in Hellgate London, was a system where you could try to improve an item, increasing a weapons DPS for example, however with the rather important caveat, that the item had a chance to be lost in the process. The game had a rather fun feature, where if anyone managed to increase the stats of an item enough times without losing it (10 times or so), the game sent a message in the chat to everyone else who was currently online. Creating some unique sense of community. On the flipside, this was a pretty unbalanced feature only really useful for people with endless amounts of gold to throw after high end items. But it was interesting none the less.

I see some nice ideas there. Nice work but i doubt Blizz would taky the effort to redesign any part of this game before expansion (actually i doubt they will ever do that).
I would like to see how your ideas work in game, especially crafting part but Blizz is picking up only simple suggestions from the community. If they would have to implement all those changes we would wait another few years.

I'd add one more thing that would make the itemization slightly better. Item quality.
In my opinion every item should have a chance to get better quality (let's say from 0 to 100% improved quality). The perfect quality items would drop very rarely but you could just improve the quality of the items using gold or some kind of runes. It would be also a nice gold sink because let's say you would have to pay 1 bilion gold to get good immortal king chest (the cost could depend on the itemscore) from 90% quality to 100% (100m per 1%). Of course the lower quality improvement would be cheaper than that.
Quality would give you better stats on the item (for example 0,5% cc per 10% quality on amulets) or even a unique item ability on 100% quality if the items is legendary./set.

Good start!
However, i don´t like the idea of simply putting more money into it and automatically gets better. What do you think about random rolles? And we don´t want to force people into buying gold so 10m per % maybe seems a little to high!^^
Also, how about the FIRST affix that is put on the item is affected by this hidden quality level allowing it to improve it by up to 30%?
E.g. blue gloves with 100 dex and 100 armor. If dex was rolled first you can cube the item as often as you want until you get to 130 dex 100 armor, which would take about 30 attempts.

I'm not so sure about the thematic crafting recipes; Crimson, Obsidian, Ember. I would probably just prefer the normal crafting system, with the player simply having more influence on what they end up getting. When you place the decision part on Blizzard, as in creating "thematic items" such as your 3 examples, the items could very easily end up being either irrelevant or overpowered/required, Letting the player decide for themselves, as long as they manage to get the needed materials, opens up for more custo mization (especially if/when the item stats themselves get better balanced in the future). That said, those crimson, obsidian items etc. could easily work the same way as set item recipes do now - as they surely sound interesting. I just don't think they can stand alone in the crafting system.
Some of those stat ideas could work well as actual stats that could end up on any item tbh. Sure, then you could have them on the same item as Crit chance - which would go against your goal I guess - but if we ended up having enough interesting stats to choose from, then you simply wont be be able to get all of them anymore, and would have to pick where you wanted to focus.

As for crafting, a lot of the "crafting and item enchanting" should focus on the broad customization of all types of items. Your imbue idea, as mentioned, could work insanely well toward improving less used types of items, but there is also a need for more item progression in general imo, and redesigned crafting system that allows the user to have more influence on the outcome. On top of that, the game could imo, greatly benefit from better item sinks.

These thematic recipes are supposed to allow for more customization and choices. Currently it all comes down to the dps/def screen and as long as you can select or even influence the affixes the items have, there always will be a "better" choice. I think it really IS necessary to have items that can not have every affix possible and therefore allow affixes to "fight" each other.

Yes, basicly these crafting items can be considered sets. But sets have these huge restrictions to them. a ) The setbonus is fixed and i really want to allow people to emphasize on improving more and more on the unique aspects of the craftings. b ) Sets makes players go "all or nothing" in to many cases. Either the setbonus is to overwhelming or to weak and doesn´t have enough "flavour". Players should have to think about every slot individually.

SWG had, imo, some of the most interesting crafting system in any game.
It basically build upon one thing; quality variables on crafting materials. When finding a specific crafting material you didnt just find "Fiery Brimstone". You found a "Fiery Brimstone: Quality 3, Purity: 5, Sturdiness 10" (or whatever the stats should be called). These stats directly affected how high quality the items you crafted would have.

These crafting materials wouldnt be enough on their own of course.
The other end of the system; the items you craft with the materials, would have to be redesigned as well.
When using very high quality crafting materials, you should of course have a very high chance of getting some godly item out of the process. Maybe even allow you to pick most of the stats on the item - depending on the quality of the materials - and the amount of said stat determined by the quality of the materials too of course.
There should still be some randomness to the process though, knowing exactly what you get isn't interesting in the long run imo.

Having the itemquality influence the materials you have is definitely something i´d like to see. The way i thought about this is linking it to the affixquality. This can make white and blue items usefull aswell. Almost perfect blue items or white items with perfect +15% values can become really valuable again even outside of their use as crafting materials. Yellow items would still benefit from having more affixes to roll.

The big problem about this systems, however, is the disparity of rewards. If you can roll next to perfect affixes just because you disenchanted a few next to perfect affixes directs player even further into the "perfect or useless" way of thinking. I thought about giving higher quality materials a higher chance to create multiple crafts in one go. Materials with a quality of 9 (out of 10) can have a 5% chance to create 5 items at once, materials of the best quality can have a 1% chance to create 10 items at once!!! (doesn´t this sound gorgeous?)

Moving unto Hellgate London, what they could learn here (and from TL2 as well for that matter) is other ways to improve items, as both of these games have quite a bit of enchanting and socketing options.

It should be possible to
1) Add 1 random stat to any item in the game - for some gold price. And for a very high price, allow us to remove the stat again, if it wasnt good enough. This process should be quite random - with the added stat only following the same rules as normal item creating. Would work as a gold sink and a "potentially never-ending" way to further improve items, after you found them.

2) Allow us to add one extra socket to any and all items (ignoring the normal socket limits) for a gold cost. Leading to:

3) More gem types!
3a) A special rare type of gem with no build in stats, which can "absorb" one stat from an item, destroying the item in the process. Allowing you to customize items a lot more, and having yet another item sink.
Some limits on which stats could be transfered this way - and maybe how many of such gems could be equipped at the same time - surely had to exist however - but should be broad enough to allow real customization

4) Another "high end option for people with too much gold" for customization that could be found in Hellgate London, was a system where you could try to improve an item, increasing a weapons DPS for example, however with the rather important caveat, that the item had a chance to be lost in the process. The game had a rather fun feature, where if anyone managed to increase the stats of an item enough times without losing it (10 times or so), the game sent a message in the chat to everyone else who was currently online. Creating some unique sense of community. On the flipside, this was a pretty unbalanced feature only really useful for people with endless amounts of gold to throw after high end items. But it was interesting none the less.

Something i really really really do NOT want is to "cater to the rich". Having awesome crafts should be a privilege to those that are dedicated to crafting and not to those that are dedicated to money. Let´s change it to "high end option for people with to much dedication" and i´ll be absolutely fine with that idea! (I don´t know how to make that work though)

Following the idea of parallel progression crafting materials have to pile up while the player is doing whatever he wants. The other goal is to make the piñatas that dare calling themselves our enemies more interesting to pop. We can achieve this by changing the current crafting material system a bit:

- Material quality: Depending on the affix quality of the salvaged item we can get 3 types of material quality: normal, superior and magical. Items in the 0%-60% range of the best affixroll salvage into normal quality (90%) or superior quality (10%). Items with the best affix being in the 60%-94% range salvage into normal quality (20%), superior quality (70%) or magical quality (10%). Items with their best affix in the 94%-100% range salvage into superior quality (50%) or magical quality (50%). This allows you to gain superior and magical crafting materials even from white and blue items, making these items really interesting to dedicated crafters. Yellow items still have the advantage of rolling more affixes and therefore having a higher chance on high affix rolls.

Usage of normal, superior and magical quality: At first we have to remove these materials from the inventory completely. Right now there are 3 different lvl 60 crafting materials and adding quality levels will overflow the inventory. Since these materials don´t have any use at all, no matter how often you click on them they do not deserve to be in the players inventory. Create a new crafting window with a 3x3 grid. Not only does this look really compelling and tidy, but it also removes the hastle of storing and picking them back up. Dragging those into the trading window should still be possible though. Also, dragging higher quality materials into lower quality brackets inside the materials window allows to downgrade the materials fast. At the crafting window the player can chose which quality level materials he wants to use.
The different quality levels influence the efficiency of the player´s crafting by altering the amount of items crafted. Normal materials always generate one item. Superior materials have a 20% chance to create one item, a 70% chance to create two items at once and a 10% chance to create 3 items. Now things get crazy: Magical items have a 50% chance to create 3 items, a 30% chance to create 4 items, a 15% chance to create 5 items, a 4% chance to create 7 items and a 1% chance to create 10(!!!) items at once. These items are rolled individually and the player should make sure he has free inventory space if he doesn´t want to turn into a pinata himself.

- New crafting item, that CRAFTS!: More loot is something everybody wants. Another colour that we can cheer about and look forward to on every kill called SCROLL OF THE HORADRIM.
A very rare crafting material that can drop everywhere and stacks in the players inventory. Dropchances are higher for unique monsters. This item allows players to increase the third affix of an item by a random amount between 1%-30%. The bonus is shown as a new affix at the bottom of the items description and adds "of the horadrim" to the basic items name. You can use the scroll of Horadrim as often as you want to reroll the increas of the third affix.

Something i really really really do NOT want is to "cater to the rich". Having awesome crafts should be a privilege to those that are dedicated to crafting and not to those that are dedicated to money. Let´s change it to "high end option for people with to much dedication" and i´ll be absolutely fine with that idea! (I don´t know how to make that work though)

Agreed on the last one. Mentioned it because it was quite interesting (especially the community alert part of it), but not sure how to ever balance it.

The difference between "dedicated" and "rich" isn't large however - even if we ignore RMAH, which Blizzard should do when designing the game. RMAH is bad enough in itself imo, its mere existence shouldn't harm every other aspect of the game.

Someone who is dedicated can "easily" get lots of gold, just as they could get lots of crafting materials, or lots of Imbue drops. So while it is always nice to move away from gold usage - since it is so easily affected by inflation, and gold selling/RMAH unfortunately exists, using other forms of currencies instead (materials, imbue drops, items etc), wont change that much.
Catering to the dedicated and catering to the rich are mostly the same - especially when nearly nothing is bound on pickup in the game.

What should really be avoided however, is Blizzard looking at the game, thinking: "Damn, 0,1% of the players got billions of gold. Let us add gold sinks that costs a billion gold!". That would truly be catering to the rich, since the other 99,9% of players never would be part of it.
Better with smaller gold sinks, which are instead used more often.
Which is also another reason you are right that some randomness must always exist in crafting. So people might want to keep crafting (or enchanting, or imbuing etc) forever in the hope of that perfect roll. Rather than just crafting their perfect item once.

Would be fine (and needed thb) to reduce some of the randomness from crafting however, to make it more relevant to use.

Your idea of crafting multiple items depending on the material quality is interesting as well. But at the same time, crafting 10 useless items aren't much better than crafting one.
No one in their right mind would ever destroy a 1 billion gold legendary for a small chance of getting an item 10 times, which then on top of it had a large risk of being a bad item anyway.
I dont think crafting will ever be a success until a large part of the RNG is removed. There surely stiill need to be RNG in it, but a whole lot less.
And imo a good way to reduce the RNG would be if "the price to pay" for less RNG in crafting was paid by destroying other "higher quality" items (pretty much paying for less RNG now with previous RNG in your drops, if that makes any sense )

I don´t hold any grudges against the RMAH. Everybody seems to dislike it therefore i have to assume nobody who participates with the community is using it. And cutting the bots and chinafarmers by 15% of their work and giving it to Blizzard is definitely something i approve. However, I DO hate the GAH and the approach people have to it. They are playing it as the main income for gold and those people shouldn´t be encouraged. That´s why i´d like to ban crafting items and materials from the AH but still allow people to trade face to face. The game should be played via interaction or farming.

Also you wouldn´t have to destroy that perfect Skorn for one high quality material. But you could salvage all these lvl 60 uniques that have really awesome roles but are not used by anybody to have a chance to create 10 legendaries at once!

The problem with an item sink which only removes items nobody won't use anyway, is that it is not a very effective item sink.
The game could use a sink for those items people actually want - like you have in HC by people dying with their items.

With such a sink, it might also be easier to increase the chance of getting good drops - something a lot of people seems to crave for.

I wouldn't mind if both AHs were totally removed... but that is not likely.

easiest way to make an alternate progression that doesn't cater to the rich would be to have some form of soul bound currency. in this case, it could easily be rare crafting mats that are bound to account, like brimstones for example.

it gives a steady, less RNG form of progression not based on getting a lucky 1 billion gold drop, or a lucky item flip on AH.

But i also think a simple way to improve items is to simply add +damage skill mods on them.

Simple mods like +10-200 % damage to (insert any skill here) to any and all items from armor, rings, weapons etc.

Something as simple as that would actually promote 'building' actual builds in this game. As is, the only true damage mod in the game is CRIT which makes the game dull as hell.

Yeah, more stats that improves characters at a build-specific level is really needed. Both for having a lot more stats that people would be interested in, and for having greater distinction between gear (Now the only distinctions are str, dex and int, and that is class based rather than spec-based)
Currently most of the useful stats are good for all spec and all classes - of course there are exceptions (like the use for pick up radius for specific WD skills) but its pretty rare and minor.

+skills, not necessarily just +skill dmg, would fit perfect in that.
The +skill stats that do exist in the game is simply just not enough to make a difference in itemization. Because itsdmg skills only, and limited to few items.
Personally I think it should be +skill category, rather than +specific skill, simply because + specific skill could become a bit too specific... ending up hurting the itemization, by making it even harder than it is now, to find good items.
By item categories I mean stuff like: Primary skills, secondary skills (first and second skill tab that is) etc, but also new ones like "summon skills", "Crowd control skills", "DOT", "AOE" or whatever. Every skill in the game could be given like 2-3 categories each (from a total pool of lets say 10 categories) - Blizzard already confirmed they thought about skills in categories back when they made the Primary, secondary etc. tabs, so it shouldn't be that much work for them to categorize a bit more.

That way items could have +skills that were not too specific, but still specific enough to cater differently to different specs.

Since this should surely work for all skills, not just dmg skills, there would have to be benefits that could be given to all skills beside just increased dmg. Luckily for Blizzard, they already had such scaling skills... before they removed the rune levels. Should be plenty of inspiration to take from that.
Note: Just because each category of skills had their own stat, that wouldn't have to mean it affected every stat in the same way. Just like +all skills in Diablo 2 of course affected each skill differently.

Obviously +skill categories would also fit well into thematic imbues or crafted items if it came to that.
And again better than +specific skills could imo, as there is a middle ground to find between making stats that aren't generically good (like crit is right now) and stats that are simply too specialized to have any relevance for most players.

P.S. there should never ever be a +all skills stat. As it was the case in D2 and tbh any other game with such a stat, it will always be too strong. Like crit, or the 3 main stats, it simply affects everyone in an optimal way, which does not exactly make it an interesting choice to use such a stat.

we already do have some skill mod items. and i use them to great effect on my barb. i like my 2hand hota/rend build and i have -5 to hota and rend cost items. lets me skip all fury passives and go for survivability or offence.

the bonus to skills should not be a damage boost imo, there is plenty of damage in the game as is, they should be a thinking mans boost that lets you play around with stuff or QoL boosts to skills.

something like faster or better procs, wider aoe, slower or faster moving skills/projectiles (what evers better), extra range or cone width, shoot more of something, etc. stuff like runes do to skills but far less potent.

Edit: make your favorite skills more fun, if you make them more powerful, theory crafters will just lock you into a "most effecient" spec and most will not get used.

The next character that needs more use is Shen the Jewelcrafter! His job is to give players small improvements over long periods of time. Currently he is only capable of upgrading gems as a form of progression. Every gem that drops currently increases the players progress by a small amount. The higher the upgrade gets the lower the total increase of strength is. For every perfect gem the player currently needs 729 gemdropps of the same type in inferno-difficulty. Problems arise when players start using the auction house. The costs of buying a gem in the auction house are about the same as the costs to craft the gem yourself and therefore removes the incentives to collect gems at all. This removes Shen's purpose almost completely and therefore he needs a new thing to do!
Runecrafting allows players to improve their favourite abilities and if really dedicated, players can even "perfect" those. Long long ago every rune had multiple levels but this was removed because the system of storing hundreds of runes was to clunky. So to address this the system has to change a little:
Runepower: For every kill the player gains 1 runepower (10 for elite, 100 for bosses) to one random rune-type (crimson,obsidian,golden,indigo,alabaster) that is not capped. The runepower is shown in a small section at the bottom of the skill selection frame. Every rune-type can store up to a max of 100.000 runepower. If the player collects enough power he can use it to upgrade one of the abilities permanently to the next level by going to Shen and selecting the ability and the rune he wants to improve in a new tab called "Runecrafting". There are 3 upgrades for every rune possible. The first one costs 10.000, the second one costs 35.000 and the last and final upgrade costs 100.000. Upgrading reduces the runepower by the amount it costs. Players start earning runepower after completing normal mode by killing monster that grants experience. Runepower is shared among all characters of the same gamemode (softcore - hardcore).

New items for runepower: These items allow players to influence the runepower farming process and give new items to be excited about if they drop:
- Powerfocus: There are 5 types of powerfoci, one for every type of rune. They have a rare dropchance (one every 1500 kills) and are bound to the account. Once used they make the next 5.000 runepower gathered go to the rune-type they were called. (Crimson powerfocus, obsidian powerfocus,...)
- Equilibrium: Very very rare. Once used they make the next 5.000 runepower gathered go towards every rune-type at once increasing the amount gathered by 5 times. Tradable. They can be combined with a powerfocus by Shen and create enchanced powerfoci, which give 3 times more runepower, but only to one type of rune.
- Concentrated runepower: very quite rare. Can be given to Shen to increase a random runetype by 5.000 runepower. Account bound. Can be combined with equilibrium to give 2.000 runepower to every rune-type.

What would change? Level 60 characters progress in even more tabs with every kill they make, they have a chance to receive even more loot and most importantly players will have to make choices again. It would take huge amounts of time to level every rune to max level (3.625.000 runepower per rune for a character with 25 abilities) and therefore characters are forced to make choices again. The rune upgrades are not strong enough to greatly change a characters power, but still encourage those who focus on their favourite abilites. Since runepower is shared amongst all characters it's also profitable to level new ones.

Discussion: Ok, I haven´t made clear what exactly I'd like to see. Give me thoughts and ideas for affixes or items that don't allow for an optimal choice. This is currently a huge problem in Diablo 3 and needs to be addressed. So what affixes can you think of that do NOT hyperstack with attackspeed and critical damage?

E.g. Would an item that removes resources or cooldowns from an ability completely be doable? How much would the player have to give up for such an item.
Another example: Introduce on hit procs that deal damage. One type of on hit procs per itemslot. Then introduce a unique weapon with 500 dps and no crit or socket but that allows on hit procs to scale with the main attribute or that simply increases damage of onh hit procs by 1000% making them superstrong to stack.

Step 3:
After your helm reaching enhancement level X. You can complete the enhancement progression with Item C.
The item gets a colored socket. You can choose the color. Red for Ruby, Yellow for Topaz, ...
You can only put this gem into the socket.
Furthermore you get an extra +1 pick up radius for gold.

How to get Item A, B and C?
There are many different solutions, but these items should be account bound.
examples:

Item A:
For item A you must aquire 4 items.
You get them from the final bosses of all acts in inferno, they drop for 100%, but your startquest must be the first quest of the act.

Item B:
Therefore you must combine 2 different types of dust.
You need 20 Dust of Elites, 3 Dust of Gems.

Dust of Elites
For every elite pack or rare group there is a chance to drop dust of elites.
dropchance depening on Monsterpower and NV stacks.
Formula:
%dropchance = NV * Monsterpower * 2
This means, you must farm on mp1 or higher and only have a chance for dropping this dust after your first nephalem valor buff.
f.e.
10 = 1 * 5 * 2
100 = 5 * 10 * 2
Dust of Gems
You must destroy 1 Ruby + 1 Topaz + 1 Amethyst + 1 Emerald to get 1 Dust of Gems.

- It NEEEDS randomization beyond the dropluck of tomes and dusts,
- there have to be alternatives, options the player has to be able to go by and downsides for taking that path other than huge costs and removal of the item from the market,
- It has to add possibilities for customization. If you complete enhancing two helms simultaneously with one being 5% weaker than the other at the start, you will end up with 2 exact same helms again with a difference of 5% in overall strength. In the end you didn't change your character at all.